Depressed WAW, digging in, learning about myself

[Card29]

This:

"I was never going to see it until something traumatic happened to force me to see clearly"

really triggered something deep inside of me. I feel exactly the same way and I'm ashamed of it. How do you feel about it? I feel like I should have been less self-centered about my own resentment and pain before BD so I could see HIS pain and HIS resentment and perhaps save this M before it got so diseased.

I have regret, but it is pointless regret because of what I said (I was never going to see it until something serious happened). I hate that I was not more introspective and didn't seek any professional relationship advice, even early on when things were good. I also wish she had just threatened D instead of actually going down this road out of the clear blue sky, but that is also cemented in history.

How will I ever trust his silence again?

This is looking way down the road, but I would not let there be silence again. One of the pillars of a successful marriage, it seems from everything I've read, HAS to be regular, abundant, intimate conversation. We used to talk every night in bed for an hour, with the lights out, nothing else going on. We stopped years ago, and I even developed a habit of sleeping on the couch most nights. Yep. I would love for something like that to start up again. I also saw one of the reconciled vets on here who now takes part of EVERY Sunday and asks the same intimate questions to the other person, and they answer honestly (both S's so this). I'm guessing they are questions custom for their M, but I imagine they should address how fulfilled they are, how their emotional needs are being met, what their dreams for the future are, etc. If a couple regularly has honest conversations like that, I don't think it's possible to simultaneously have plotting silences (or at least it's much less likely).

More generally, don't worry about the future through the lens of your OLD marriage. If you reconcile and do so through DB and other marriage building principles, your old marriage will be dead and replaced with a brand new one. So don't expect to have perpetual, disconcerting silence in your M ever again, whether it's with this H or someone else.